


Technological Telepathy

by Sparky_Lurkdragon



Category: Sonic the Hedgehog (Video Games)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Disassociation, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Medical Procedures, Post-Sonic Adventure 2, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sci-fi Brain Surgery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-17 23:03:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21551221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sparky_Lurkdragon/pseuds/Sparky_Lurkdragon
Summary: Shadow views some documents and video related to his original memory loss.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 33





	Technological Telepathy

Shadow pressed play.

He saw himself entering the room where he had been created, his father behind him, and watched as he stopped to take in the broken computers and general disarray offset by the neat collection of equipment in the middle of the room. His spikes were shorter then. Still growing back.

He heard himself speak, voice quiet, uncertain. "How long will it take?"

Gerald answered easily. "Ideally, about two hours. And you'll probably be down for another thirty minutes or so afterwards while you're coming to." He put a gentle hand on Shadow's shoulder that in the present Shadow knew had made him flinch, even if the camera was too far away with too poor an image quality to show it. "We don't have to do this if you decide against it. But I really do think it will help."

In the past, he took some time to answer, weighing his options as he looked around the room. He remembered. The professor had told him it was to help with his persistent nightmares and flashbacks, which, if he was honest, it actually had. His original growth tank had been converted to a surgical table with a glass canopy, monitors and a wheeled table next to it. The table bore syringes and tools he couldn't guess the purpose of - wouldn't guess - wrong guesses - looked like - _wouldn't_ -

He paused the video and ground his teeth, letting his breathing calm down. Once it had, he stubbornly let the video continue.

In the past, he finally answered by approaching the converted growth tank, hesitation and tension obvious even through the degraded video. He climbed up, removed the few clothes he wore, and laid down. Gerald kept close behind him, voice low and soothing as he spoke. "You're going to be fine, Shadow. Everything will make sense once we're done. Everything." He turned to the table, his back to both Shadow and the camera, and paused. "We're going to start with a shot. Close your eyes, now."

They hadn't actually used many syringes, or at any rate not enough or at the wrong times for a fear of them to embed itself in his mind. If anything, they were linked to his few, minor, hard-won victories. A somewhat hysterical laugh started somewhere in his chest and came out as a strangled, tight-jawed noise and Shadow realised he'd missed some of what Gerald was doing or saying, having to rewind.

It wasn't that much. An injection to calm his nerves enough that he didn't flinch as Gerald hooked him up to this monitor and that monitor, and in the present Shadow's fingers twitched a little. Another injection, this one to actually knock him out, and his father standing at his side, holding his hand and smoothing down the fur on the back of it in a repetitive, soothing motion, never quite touching his fingers. In the present, he clenched and unclenched his right fist. Clenched, unclenched.

Now the mask to keep him under. Now a segmented tube from one of the machines he hadn't been able to (didn't want to) guess the purpose of, placed carefully against the side of his head, drilling sounds-

His chair scraped back, his ears were flicking, his spikes were flared, and he was at the window, slamming his hands on the sill to glare out at the high-rise building next to his. To glare down below, at the people, at the crowd, the thousands of specks going through their days. How many, how many, how many?

How many happy, how many not, how many like him, descended from those like him, how many, too many-

He dragged himself away from the window and crashed down below it, curled against the wall, and scraped his bare claws through his head spikes. His spikes were still there. His claws were still there. He was still there.

The drilling stopped.

He was still there.

_"Even your memories might not be real, you know?"_

Maria was real. He really had known her. They were real. Other footage from the records he'd fought to get proved that. Real. Real.

Shadow exhaled forcefully, drew his breath back in shaking.

GUN and their black sites were real. Everything was.

He sat, scraping at his spikes. Never touching his ears.

He was real.

He wasn't sure how long he had been sitting under his apartment window by the time he collected himself. The strangled-off sound started again as he realised. Of course he wasn't sure.

He could find out, at least. He stood, feeling like he should be unsteady but as perfectly balanced as he always was (as he usually was). An oddity about the window sill caught his attention from his peripheral vision, resolving into furrows scratched into it as he focused. Shadow grimaced and made a mental note to fix it later (if his memory worked well enough to recall he needed to).

All the same, he kept looking at the claw marks. (He'd remember, and even if he didn't, they were right there and he would see them later. He would see them later and they were a reminder that he was here in _this_ space and not in _that_ place.) 

Shadow shook his head and crossed back to the computer. The clock had advanced sixteen minutes. Good. Not that long. In the video, Gerald had sat down at a terminal which had a cord running from it to the equipment that now had a direct line into Shadow's brain. He had been connected to it before, in the time before his first awakening.

He still didn't really know all the details of how the memory transferal had worked. How he had woken up knowing language, facts about the world, a general sense of his own identity, and a personality geared towards protectiveness and competition. It had involved investigating people's recall of their own memories and how they affected activity in different parts of the brain. Probably mostly Mobians, and probably mostly hedgehogs.

They were real.

Shadow skipped the video ahead two hours, watched as he was disconnected from the memory transferal, then ahead a further ten minutes, twenty, thirty, forty - too much, back five, back two more, and there, he was waking up. He knew Gerald wouldn't have said anything in the intervening time. Too much to give away. Too many working microphones.

He watched as Gerald sat with him, holding his hand while the anaesthesia cleared out of his system as quickly as any other poison. "Good morning, Shadow. How do you feel?"

In the past, he sat up, looking at Gerald. He seemed to think about it, then spoke, slowly. "...I feel perfect."

In the present, he gave voice to what he knew he was thinking. "It worked, Professor."

Gerald leaned forward. "Do you? Good. Good, Shadow. What do you remember?"

He said, "I work for GUN now."

But he thought, "I understand the plan."

Mostly Mobians. Mostly hedgehogs. But there was no reason a few human memories couldn't find their way in. Telepathy by way of technology. More invasive, more destructive, but it had worked.

"Right. Good. What is your purpose as one of their soldiers?"

"I will fight."

"...To kill them, and everyone else."

For Professor Robotnik's purposes, it had worked.

"That's right. Oh, Shadow." There was a smile on the old professor's face and in his voice. "Let's go report to them. Won't they be _pleased_."

He nodded.

"The fools." He closed the playback and sagged in his chair, the end of a transcript from another file visible on his screen.

**of the day, Project Shadow represents millions down the hole if you don't get it under control. We've tried everything. Your turn.**

**R: I think I might have something. He was created with memories already implanted.**

**K: And?**

**R: And, I might be able to adjust them if I had access to the same technology.**

**K: Really.**

**R: With respect - all due respect - it isn't designed to work on anything besides someone like him in the first place. There's no telling what it would do to anyone else, and I don't know for certain that I can adjust anything but broad details on Shadow himself. But as you say, you have tried everything else, haven't you.**

**K: All right. What do you need to make this work?**

**R: Nothing of the sort exists on Mobius. It will have to be on the ARK, in the Project Shadow area. And I will need to be alone with him until he - Wait! Listen to me. As I said, I can't be sure of how much I can adjust, and again with respect, he has too many negative memories associated with this organisation already. I will need - there will be a window of time during which he won't remember much of anything, and if I have to adjust too closely to his present, if you will, it will only confuse him and make him suspicious. I MUST be alone with him while he recovers from his imprisonment, and I MUST be alone with him for the procedure. After that, he will be yours, as I am.**

**K: I'll think about it. Take him back, Sergeant.**


End file.
